Acadian Museum celebrates 18th annual Queen’s Proclamation

On July 28, the Royal Proclamation Exhibit at the Acadian Museum will be open from 1:00 until the celebration of a memorial Mass at 4:00 at our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Erath by Fr. Metrejean and Fr. Bill Melancon.
The Mass will be dedicated to the thousands of Acadians who suffered and died during the ethnic cleansing in 1755—known as the Grand Dérangement.
In January, 1990, Warren A. Perrin prepared a petition and had it delivered to the British Crown. The petition sought a formal apology from The Crown for their role in the 1755 Deportation of Acadians from Nova Scotia. The British prepared a strategy to eradicate the Acadian culture: ethnic cleansing. Today, because nearly half of the Acadians died, many now call it genocide.
Happily, with near-unanimous international support, the effort was successfully concluded on December 9, 2003, when Queen Elizabeth II’s representative signed the Royal Proclamation. The implications were three-fold: an acknowledgment of the horrific wrongs committed against the Acadian people in the name of the British Crown; a symbolic reconciliation for the death and suffering resulting from the diaspora; and the establishment of July 28 of each year as a Day of Commemoration of the Acadian Deportation.